Walnut Ridge on the block

Tuesday

Apr 12, 2011 at 12:01 AMApr 12, 2011 at 11:12 AM

Eric Poole

ELLWOOD CITY - Five years ago, when Ellwood City Area School District was considering a school realignment, Lauren Smith opposed it.

On Monday night, she regretted that opposition. Smith said her son had a difficult time making the transition from Walnut Ridge Elementary School to Lincoln Junior-Senior High School as a seventh-grader.

"I wish when you were discussing this five years ago, that I was in favor of it," she said during Monday's school board meeting.

Smith and other parents who were against grouping the district's elementary school students by grade level rather than neighborhoods five years ago expressed a different opinion Monday. This time around, the big difference is that Ellwood City Area School District has a $2.3 million budget hole with few options to fill it.

On Monday, district Superintendent Frank Aloi unveiled a plan to put a dent in that deficit by closing Walnut Ridge at the end of this school year, and adopting a grade-level alignment for the remaining three elementary schools.

Under the proposal, which would be voted on next month at the earliest, students in kindergarten through second grade would attend North Side School, third- and fourth-graders would go to Perry, and fifth- and sixth-graders would be at Hartman School.

"It will benefit the students educationally and the taxpayers," Aloi said. "If we don't make a move now, you'll be here in three or four years asking me, ‘How are we going to keep our schools open?' "

But not everybody was pleased with the proposal.

Walnut Ridge parent Colleen McMillan said she didn't like either the school's closing or the grade consolidation.

"I know a lot of parents with kids a few years apart, and they like having the older kid paving the way for the younger kid," she said.

School board President Mike Neupauer sympathized with McMillan, but said the district doesn't have any other option. Neupauer, who lives on the North Side, said he can see his kids' elementary school - at least for this year - from his front door.

Under the proposal, his children would be scattered throughout the district.

"I wish, like you," he said to McMillan, "that my oldest could pave the way for my youngest child, but that's a luxury that, based on the figures, we can't afford."

Eventually - within the next 10 years - Aloi said the district could close Perry School, the oldest of Ellwood City's elementaries, and expand Hartman and North Side for all of the elementary students.

Aloi said closing Walnut Ridge would save at least $600,000 through staff reductions, including eliminating as many as nine teaching positions. The superintendent said he hoped those teaching positions could be cut through retirements.

The grade-level consolidation would have the advantages of keeping children in the same grade level together from kindergarten through high school graduation. It would also keep teachers from each grade level in the same building, which would enable greater collaboration among teachers.

Joe Lamenza, a Wayne Township resident who teaches fourth grade in Beaver Area School District, has been through a grade consolidation, when his district consolidated its students in two grade-level elementary buildings.

"From a teacher's point of view, it's fantastic," he said. "We meet as a team, all six fourth-grade teachers once a week."

Ellwood City district officials said the move was necessary not only because of Gov. Thomas Corbett's proposed budget, which leaves the district with $1.7 million less in state subsidies for next school year compared with this year, but also because of other economic forces.

Costs are expected to go up more than $500,000, mostly through increased salaries and benefits, which would raise the deficit to around $2.3 million.

Enrollment has been declining faster than any other school district in Lawrence County. The district's population also is falling, and the tax base along with it.

"It's really a drastic situation that forces us to do the things we're considering," Neupauer said.

Aloi said he had considered closing Perry School, but ultimately, administrators decided that the other three schools could absorb Walnut Ridge's projected enrollment of 149 for 2011-12 more easily than Perry's 275. North Side, the largest elementary, is estimated to have 315, and Hartman is expected to have 280.

More cuts are planned, Aloi said, with the hope of getting the deficit to around $1 million, and then use the fund balance, which sits around $4.6 million, to cover the rest without a tax increase.

Bus transportation is another issue yet to be ironed out, Aloi said. After three meetings between officials from the district and the bus contractor, Ellwood City Transit, transportation costs will not increase.

The preliminary plan is to have two bus runs - one for students in kindergarten through fourth grade and one for fifth-graders through high school.

That transportation plan, which could put fifth-graders on buses with high school seniors, bothered some parents.

"My daughter is turning 10, and you're going to put her on a bus with 18-year-olds," Brittany Francis said.

Aloi responded that most Lincoln High School seniors drive to school themselves and said transportation issues would be discussed further.

Eric Poole can be reached online at epoole@ellwoodcityledger.com.

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